Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Challenging Tanner

Yesterday the NRCC begin touting Crockett County, Tn farmer and gospel singer Stephen Fincher as their preferred candidate to challenge eleven term Tennessee Congressman John Tanner(D) next year. Mr Tanner represents the eighth district which mainly encompasses the area north of I-40 between Nashville and Memphis. With the exception of Haywood,Houston and Shelby counties the eighth district is mainly made up of rural white counties that are friendly to the GOP in statewide elections. That friendliness though hasnt transferred down into many local races in that district as of yet. The most populous whole county in the eighth is Madison and its a totally different county politically speaking than it was in 1988 when Tanner last faced a serious challenge. The GOP controls pretty much every county office in Madison along with a decent majority on the county commission. Its also rated as the 160th most GOP congressional district in the country by Cook Political Report. So he has a good base of voters to start with if his campaign continues to grow over the upcoming months. His campaign spokesman is already claiming they've raised over $100,000 in just the last few weeks. They'll need to continue raising money like that if they want to compete with Tanners warchest which has been swelling with each passing year because of the lack of credible GOP challengers. This congressional seat has always been controlled by the democrats so it certainly won't be easy to win it even if it was an open seat. But at this point in 1993, the NRCC was facing the same difficult odds against longtime Congressmen Jack Brooks and Tom Foley and we all know what happened to them a year later. So you never say never.....